About modifying a published form template

Microsoft Office InfoPath

About modifying a published form template

After you have published your form template, you may need to make changes to it. For example, you may need to add more controls, change the data validation rules, or change the text that appears on the form. However, before modifying a form template, you need to be aware of how your changes will affect existing forms.

When you modify a form template in design mode, the Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 Automatically upgrade existing forms option, which is enabled by default, helps to ensure that changes you make to a published form template don't prevent users from opening and working with any existing forms (.xml files) that are based on it. This feature allows users to open the existing forms even if the XML Schema of the form template has been changed. This is because InfoPath is able to schematically reconstruct the .xml file so that it is compatible with the new XML Schema of the modified form template.

Although users will still be able to open and work with the existing forms, some changes you make to the form template can cause data to be permanently removed from those forms. For example, if you delete a field from the data source of a form template, any data users have typed into that field will be deleted from all of the existing forms based on that form template. This is because the form template's schema now specifies that the field does not exist. The following list contains the changes that can cause similar deletions of data from existing forms:

Renaming, moving, or deleting a field or group from the data source
Changing a repeating field or repeating group to a non-repeating field or group
Changing the data type of a rich text field
Manually changing the version number of the form template

Show Tip

To help ensure that your existing forms remain compatible with the XML Schema of the updated or modified form template, you can take certain precautions. For example, always add fields or groups to the data source instead of removing them, and only change the names of fields or groups in forms that you have not yet published. Also, when saving your changes, you can choose to publish the modified form template with a new name or to a new location, instead of overwriting the existing form template. This gives you the ability to continue to work with the existing forms while ensuring that data entered into them is preserved and accessible.

Notes

If the Automatically upgrade existing forms option is not enabled when you modify a form template, existing forms based on that form template will not be automatically upgraded to be compatible with the changes, and they may not open or work properly.
Renaming or moving a form template that has existing forms based on it can prevent those forms from opening or working properly because they will not reference the new name or location of the form template.

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